


best part

by playexodus



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, hirugami is in pain mostly, sorry about that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28970586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playexodus/pseuds/playexodus
Summary: He never thought he could be with his best friend and still feel so desperately alone.
Relationships: Hirugami Sachirou/Hoshiumi Kourai
Comments: 8
Kudos: 78





	best part

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daedalust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daedalust/gifts).



> for kdad as part of geese exchange! 
> 
> it was lovely exploring hiruhoshi’s dynamic and I really hope I did them justice. enjoy!

Sachirou squints against the sunlight as he pulls up outside the house. He spots him right away, leaning against the porch railing with his telltale head of white hair. His hands prickle after a whole year of the absence of warmth - the ghost of his best friend’s hand in his. 

“Hey,” he says, getting out of his car, and Hoshiumi Kourai is kind enough to bestow him with a glare, angry and familiar. Sachirou’s eyes ache. He wants to blame it on the jet lag, but he knows better.

“What the fuck do you want,” Kourai says flatly.

Kourai doesn’t say much else during the drive, which is both surprising and unsurprising. Sachirou was the one who’d left and gone mostly radio silent for months. 

“Thanks for coming,” Sachirou says.

“You called my mom,” Kourai answers. “Low blow. She’s the reason I agreed to see you.”

“Yeah, but -”

“But you left. I’m well aware,” Kourai interrupts, his voice thick with months of righteous fury. 

Sachirou winces and goes quiet. Kourai looks at him with piercing green eyes. He might be the shorter one between them, but he’s always had a way of making himself the bigger presence.

“I’m sorry,” Sachirou says.

Kourai scoffs. “Sure you are.”

Sachirou’s knuckles are scraped up, browned with specks of dirt and blood. It hurts, in a satisfying way. His hands, his pain, his problem. He can’t fix it, so it should hurt. 

“What the hell are you doing!” someone exclaims from behind him, dragging him away from the stone wall. Some distant part of him recognizes that it’s that white-haired kid, the one he always sees on the bench. 

His hands hurt. His hands are the problem. He hates them. 

“I think...maybe...no - probably...I don’t really like volleyball that much.”

The boy looks at him contemplatively, saying nothing for a while. 

“Then...why not just quit?”

Sachirou is reminded of that clarity in the air just after it rains, when the petrichor permeates his skin, and if you squint just enough, the light refracts into rainbows of colour.

_Just quit._

The glow of the sunset turns the boy’s cropped white hair a strange burnt orange, like a flame. Sachirou wants to laugh. Or cry. Or something. 

“Maybe you’ve just had your fill of volleyball for now.” He shrugs. 

They look out at the rooftops trailing off into the horizon. Blood drips from Sachirou’s fingers.

“What’s your name?” 

“Hoshiumi Kourai,” he answers, straightening noticeably. “I’m gonna be the ace of this team, so you better remember me!” 

This time, Sachirou laughs for real. Hoshuimi’s eyebrows are scrunched, his mouth set in a stubborn scowl.

“You’re laughing at me ‘cause I’m too short to be an ace, right? Cut it out!”

“I’m not laughing at you, I believe you. It’s just that most people don’t introduce themselves like you do. I liked it.” He bows slightly. “I’m Hirugami Sachirou. Will you help me clean up my hands?”

“Oh.” His eyes drop to Sachirou’s fingers, then he exclaims, “You’re bleeding a lot! You can’t just wash that off!” Sachirou doesn’t even have the time to leap back before Hoshiumi grabs his hands, making him wince in pain. Hoshiumi ignores him, squeezing his fingers. “You have to come over! My mom has gauze and alcohol wipes at home.”

His eyes are so wide. “Sure.” The prickling pain of Hoshiumi’s hand against his own is distracting enough that he answers without thinking, but before he can process that, Hoshiumi is already running off, like he’s expecting him to follow. 

A foreign sensation settles in Sachirou’s bones and he feels light in a way he’s never felt in years. For once, his brain is silent: it isn’t raging at him with mantras of how he can’t afford to lose or falter. 

That’s right. If he doesn’t like volleyball, he can quit. 

“Oi, are you coming?!” A shrill yell sounds from down the road, Hoshiumi’s shock of white hair stark against the landscape. 

But, Sachirou thinks, maybe not just yet. 

Kourai doesn’t look at him in the car. He stares straight ahead, arms crossed and spine stiff as a rod. 

“Are you cold? Is the heat turned up high enough?” Sachirou asks, awkwardly trying to fill the silence.

Kourai says nothing. Sachirou turns it up anyway.

“How’s your brother?”

Nothing.

“Are you just gonna give me the silent treatment for the rest of the day?”

Kourai shrugs. “I’m not interested in making small talk with you.”

“Then...what do you wanna talk about?”

“We haven’t talked in months, not sure why you wanna start now,” he snarks.

Sachirou sighs. “Look I told you, I’m sorry I couldn’t stay in touch, I just needed a little space -”

“Bullshit.”

“Fine,” he says, exasperated. “Let’s not talk.”

When Kamomedai wins nationals in their 3rd year, Sachirou looks to Kourai first.

Sweat beads his face and drips from his hair, glinting in the light. He’s fallen to his knees, staring at his own hands. The others are yelling at the top of their lungs, crowding both of them near the net. Can Kourai even breathe like that with his teammates on top of him? He should tell them to move, give him some space.

“Hirugami, you damn beast!” Someone’s right in his ear. “You stuffed it!”

Oh, right.

It refuses to sink in, really. They’re urging them to move off center court so they can take the net down and make arrangements for the medal ceremony, but the exhaustion of several days straight of playing until his muscles feel like string cheese is hitting him all at once.

“I’m gonna eat my weight in steak after this,” Gao slurs beside him, and Sachirou huffs out a laugh.

“I’d like to see you do it,” he answers, and Gao somehow musters up the energy to smack him on the back, hard enough to make him stumble.

“Oi, I’m your senpai,” he winces, but Gao just cackles. “Challenge accepted!”

Kourai still hasn’t gotten up when Sachirou goes to him. He looks up in a daze, his rimmed eyes wide and unseeing. “Sachirou,” he says in a nearly inaudible whisper. 

There’s something painful about knowing each other inside and out, to the point that every single word said to the other comes laden with all of their memories and experiences. Not everyone can handle that sort of burden. Not everyone would be willing to carry that weight with them. 

Every time Kourai says his name, he remembers.

Sachirou holds out a hand. 

“Hey,” he says gently. “Come back to me. We have to line up.”

Kourai’s eyes focus again and he lets Sachirou pull him up with a grumble. “What are you saying, I didn’t go anywhere.”

“Sure,” he answers, giving his hand a squeeze before letting go. “Don’t forget to be polite to the interviewers after.”

“You’re like a mom, Sachirou,” Kourai whines, face all scrunched up. 

“So you’ve said.”

Long afterwards, when they’re on the bus home and their teammates are asleep, Sachirou feels Hoshiumi’s hand curl around his own with fiery warmth. Streetlights illuminate his eyes, and Sachirou’s reminded of flames again, how Kourai reflects all the light that reaches him. 

“We did it,” he says, quieter than Sachirou’s ever heard him. 

“We did,” he agrees.

“I’m gonna play volleyball forever.”

Sachirou grins. “Obviously.”

“And I’m gonna be the best player to ever live.”

“Obviously.”

Kourai scowls. “At least tell me I’m being unrealistic or something like everyone else, Sachirou!”

“Why, so you can tell me off and spend the rest of your life proving me wrong?” Sachirou shakes his head with a laugh. “We’ve been friends long enough. I already know what you’re capable of.”

Kourai curls in on himself, trying to wrench his hand out of Sachirou’s grip. “Let me go,” he insists, but Sachirou only grips harder. 

“I have something to tell you,” he says, suddenly serious. 

“What’s that?” Kourai says absently, still trying to yank his hand away.

“Thank you.” He looks at him in the dark, the light just enough to make out the way Kourai stills and stares at him. “There’s no one else I’d rather have played volleyball with.”

“Wh-What are you saying! It’s not like I was the one who made you come to Kamomedai!” 

Sachirou doesn’t have to see it to know he’s already got that pink flush in his cheeks, that scrunched up face. 

“No,” he agrees. “But without you, I think I would’ve quit volleyball a long time ago. I owe you a lot.”

A pause, eerily silent in their corner of the bus. Sachirou can feel Kourai’s eyes on him, even if he isn’t looking at him.

“Stupid,” Kourai says, surprising him. “We’re friends. Friends don’t owe each other anything.” He rubs his thumb over Sachirou’s knuckles, tracing the places where his skin is roughened with scars, and between one breath and another, he leans into Sachirou’s shoulder. 

It’s too much. Sachirou can’t. He won’t be the one to open his mouth and ruin it. 

“Yeah,” he says, and squeezes Kourai’s hand gently. 

Years later, they go out for lunch and Kourai ruins it for him. 

“Did you hear about Kanbayashi-senpai and Hanano-san? He finally asked her out,” Gao says. “Only took him a couple years to pluck up the nerve.”

“Good for them,” Sachirou says, absently handing Kourai a napkin while he takes a big bite out of his burger. Just in time, sauce drips from Kourai’s mouth onto the napkin, and he gives Sachirou’s arm a light squeeze in gratitude.

“Nah, that’s gonna end terribly,” Kourai says dismissively around a mouthful. “And when it’s all over they won’t even have their friendship to fall back on.” 

Gao looks at him, surprised. “It’s not like you to be so pessimistic about these things, senpai. Where’s this coming from?”

Kourai shrugs. “Fukuro married his best friend, then they got divorced. He was depressed for weeks. I just think it’s better to keep your best friend than to fall in love and break up.”

“Getting married isn’t the same thing as dating,” Gao argues, but his voice fades into the background. All that remain in Sachirou’s head are Kourai’s words. 

He thought - he really thought that one day, maybe, Kourai would look at him and see him for real. Want him for real. But Kourai hasn’t thought about him like that once--hasn’t even considered the possibility. 

Sachirou doesn’t say anything for the rest of their meal until they’re on their walk back to the train station. 

“Don’t go thinking too hard, Sachirou, you’ll hurt yourself.” Kourai’s voice cuts through the fog in his head. He’s got this grin on his face, like he’s sure he knows exactly what Sachirou’s thinking. 

Sachirou looks at him - really looks at him. He’s changed a lot since they were young. All that abrasive defensiveness and that need to prove everyone wrong have disappeared. In their place rests a self-assuredness, a brazen confidence settled like a mantle on his shoulders.

“About what you said earlier. Do you really think friends shouldn’t date?”

“Oh, that’s what you’re thinking about? I didn’t realize you cared about Kanbayashi-senpai so much,” he jokes. When Sachirou doesn’t laugh, he sighs, “Alright, look. Everyone’s different, but when you’re really close I just think it’s better to have that friendship than to end up with nothing.” He shrugs. “Anyway, why’re you asking? You in love with me now or something?” Kourai teases, playfully shoving his shoulder and making him stumble.

It’s a good thing, too, because he knows that if Kourai could get a good look at his face right now, he’d see every bit of his devastation written all over it. 

“Sachirou? You oka-”

“What,” Sachirou says, “You don’t think I’m a catch?”

He surprises himself with how easily the words slip from his mouth, despite the way his entire body feels like it could collapse.

Kourai laughs, scoffing. “Sure. Model handsome. And we’ll live happily ever after.”

There’s something invading the walls of his heart, something Sachirou hasn’t experienced since middle school. He never thought he could be with his best friend and still feel so desperately alone. 

“By the way,” Kourai continues, “are we still on for tomorrow?”

Sachirou might as well be underwater, for all he can tell. His mouth refuses to move. 

“Sachirou?” Kourai grabs his shoulder, giving him a light shake. “You in there?” 

“Mmm?” He has to go--he has to look at anything else, anything that isn’t Kourai.

“Tomorrow?”

“Sure,” he manages, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from sprinting away.

That night, he enters into the search bar: _Veterinarian internships in America._

After the 10th time Kourai calls that day, Sachirou finally picks up.

“Kourai, I told you - ”

“No. You can’t just up and leave like that, I don’t know what happened but we can work this out -”

“Kourai,” he says, gentler this time, and Kourai’s voice breaks. 

“You can’t do this to me,” he says, “You’re my best friend.” And he sounds so sad, so broken. Sachirou wants to do what every cell of his body is telling him to do, to drop everything and take it all back.

 _I love you_ , he breathes. _I love you I love you I love you I love you I-_

“I’m sorry,” he says instead.

“You’re not,” Kourai says bitterly, and hangs up.

“Stop the car,” Kourai says firmly.

“What?”

“Stop the fucking car, Sachirou,” he repeats, and this time Sachirou hears the undercurrent of fury in his voice. It startles him enough to pull over onto the side of the road.

“Get out.”

“It’s my car, Kourai - ”

“Get out.”

Sachirou sighs, turning the car off. “Can you at least tell me - ”

Kourai gets out of the car himself before he can finish, walks over to the driver’s side and yanks the door open. “Out of the car, Sachirou.”

He laughs incredulously. “This is a lot, even for you.”

“A lot? Am I just ‘a lot’ to you?” Kourai spits. “Is that why you dropped everything and left the country without a word? Barely texted, barely called? Radio fucking silence?”

Sachirou rolls his eyes, pulls the keys from the car, and gets out to face him properly. Up close, he can see every single one of Kourai’s pretty, pretty lashes. “Not everything’s about you.”

“But this is, isn’t it?”

Sachirou doesn’t answer.

“ _Isn’t it_? Why else would you stop talking to me like that? Why did you fucking leave the country like some fugitive on the run?”

“I told you, I got an _internship_ -”

“Oh, did they take your phone away too? Because I can’t think of any other reason you’d -”

“ _Because it hurt!_ ”

Sachirou doesn’t realize he’s yelling until he sees Kourai flinch. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He digs his palms into his eyes, bracing himself.

“It hurt.” Even now, even months after he’d finally given up, it still hurts. “I knew you were never going to love me back and I didn’t wanna say anything. I didn’t want to ruin it. But I guess I did end up ruining it anyway.”

He can’t. He can’t open his eyes. He won’t look at Kourai ever again. They won’t even fight like this again. Kourai will look at him pityingly and tell him he’s sorry, then things will never be the same.

“You didn’t even give me a chance,” Kourai whispers. “You just ran away.”

“I didn’t have a chance. You made that very clear,” Sachirou says, bitter. 

“You didn’t even _try_ , Sachirou,” Kourai says, and his voice cracks on a sob. 

That’s when Sachirou opens his eyes, and he sees it: Kourai’s crying. It’s almost comical, the way his chest heaves and his broad shoulders shrink on themselves. Sachirou doesn’t think he’s ever seen him cry, not once, not when they lost at Nationals, not when they won at Nationals, not when he joined the Adlers, not when they won the V League Championships.

“Kourai?”

“You don’t think I’m in love with you?” Kourai snaps, even through thick tears.

“You _said_ you don’t think friends should - ”

“I know what I said, idiot.” He presses his palms into his eyes, mirroring Sachirou.

“Then...”

Kourai shoves his hands into his pockets and looks up at the sky. Puffs of white breath float from his mouth in the biting cold, his eyes and nose red. Even like this, he’s beautiful.

“Do you know how much I’ve missed you, all this time?” Kourai sighs. “My mom does. She’s the one I stayed with after you left that stupid voicemail saying you might be out of touch for a while. I thought that just meant you’d call me every month instead of every week. When you finally picked up, you wouldn’t tell me what was going on and I knew, I fucking _knew_ you were lying. Then I talked to Fukuro-san - he just repeated what you’d said. No one could tell me what the fuck was going on. And when I finally accepted that I might never see you again, you came back to Japan and called me. And when I didn’t pick up, you called my _mom_.”

Sachirou raises his hands in surrender. “Look, disappearing wasn’t my best move. But you weren’t answering my calls and I wanted - ”

“I thought you’d finally had enough of me,” Kourai says, his voice breaking. “I thought you didn’t want to be my friend anymore because you were mad at me, and I wracked my brain for weeks trying to figure out what the fuck I did to you.” He grips the lapels of Sachirou’s coat and shoves him against the car. “How could you do that to me?”

And the guilt, the force that squeezes all the breath from his lungs, it's suddenly unbearable. It was easy for him because he was the one running away, Sachirou realizes. It was easy for him because he left his best friend behind to deal with the loss. 

His eyes sting. His hands burn with phantom pain. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. 

Kourai pauses and stares at him through red-rimmed eyes for so long that Sachirou thinks it’s really over. Until Kourai finally pulls him in, holding him close. 

“I believe you.”

Watching Kourai feels like a dream. Watching him reach for his hands like he’s moving through water. Against his warmth, Sachirou’s own skin feels like ice, slowly beginning to thaw. 

“You’re cold,” Kourai says, clasping his hands in his own. 

“I - forgot my gloves,” he answers, barely squeezing the words from his throat. 

“Don’t forget to keep your hands warm, you need them to save lives now. Animal lives, anyway.” 

Kourai’s eyes are dancing, in spite of how red they are from crying. He sniffles. _Adorable_ , Sachirou thinks. 

“And I like holding them,” Kourai adds.

“...Oh,” Sachirou manages to say, dumbly. His head feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton. Is this real? Is any of this real?

No - it’s real. It’s real because he can feel Kourai’s hands around his, the warmth and familiarity of them, after a hundred thousand scalding highfives and another hundred thousand gentle touches. It’s real because Sachirou’s hands still have his scars on them. 

Kourai plants warm lips on their thumbs. “Your hands are mine now, too.”

“Okay,” Sachirou whispers. “Anything you want.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/msbyshoyou).


End file.
